


Smuggler's Moon

by CoronaTheBee



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: AU, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Jedi Ben Solo, Jedi Rey, New Jedi Order
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2018-05-20 05:10:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5992741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoronaTheBee/pseuds/CoronaTheBee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In search of Jedi relics on the moon Nar Shadda, Rey reunites with the exile-turned-smuggler Ben Solo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Nar Shadda

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: Mentions of drug-use/non-consentual dosing in this chapter.

The atmo of Nar Shaadda is greasy with pollutant, even when piped through the filters of the hired skiff. Rey alternates between shallow breaths through her nose and attempts at convincing herself _it was all going to be worth it, just wait_ —as she slips quietly through the crowd milling out of the now-landed craft.

 

The gangway bridging the skiff and the platform of the station is teeming. None of the passengers seem surprised by the thickness of the air, hanging limp and tinged with a chemical tang that makes Rey’s eyes water. Squinting against the filthy breeze makes the whole street into a smear of neon adverts and leering faces. The Smuggler’s Moon is every bit as foreboding as she had been assured it would be.

 

The dingy fog makes it difficult to see anything beyond the block she had been deposited upon, crammed as it was with crumbling scrapers and floating holo projectors. Barges, skiffs, and other low atmo transport choke the sky and obscure what little the smog did not. It is impossible to tell from her vantage point even what district she was standing in.

 

Undeterred, Rey tips up her chin and strides toward the highest building in the skyline knowing that a clear place to meditate will serve to orient her. Once she establishes the general lay of the city, searching in earnest will be much easier.

 

She hadn’t made it to the end of the row of dilapidated storefronts when a young Nikto blocks her path. His scaly face splits into a smile as he points ominously toward something behind her. Rey has no time to react.

 

A rough tug on her scalp makes Rey shout in pained surprise. Her thoughts scatter as she is pulled cruelly off-balance. The burning pressure is gone as soon as it appears and her head feels strangely light as it snaps forward again, sending her skidding on hands and knees to the grimy pavers.

 

Stunned and blinking tears from her eyes, Rey feels something feather her nape and cheeks. Bringing a hand up to swat at the strange sensation, she is stunned to find a jagged lock of her own hair between her fingers. Disbelief floods her system as she leaps up, one hand still in her ravaged hair, and launches herself after the sound of pounding feet.

 

The force burbles up instantly, until she can feel it curling under her palms and between her fingers. The latent potential is like static hovering in her hands waiting for her will. Her saber, similarly, is a familiar weight across her back. As she weaves through the crowd—trailing the disruption the thief creates as he shoves ruthlessly past—Rey reminds herself that her mission requires secrecy. On a planet of pirates, smugglers, and thieves, she will find no welcome as a Jedi.

 

She is left with simpler methods for stopping the thief. Shouting in the handful of languages she knows passably, predictably, does nothing to persuade the thief to stop. Tearing as quickly as she can through the crowd, she rounds a corner fast enough to see a second Nikto barrel headlong into a dug-out entranceway, the length of her braid swaying from his fist.

 

“Stop him!” Rey calls out at the pair of Gamorreans flanking the doorway. They give no indication that they hear or understand her frantic Basic, but grunt angrily as she approaches. She squeezes past their bulk without slowing, ducking under their arms and into the gloom.

 

The uneven steps give way quickly to a long hall, laserlight streaming in irregularly from the opposite end. The strobing light makes the graffiti crammed onto every available surface of the crowded tunnel pulse. Rey again ignores the urge to reach for the hilt tucked at her waist, eyes skimming briefly over the scrawled Huttese as she chases the flashing silhouette of the Nikto.

 

Pounding music and low light make the interior of the cantina nearly impossible to navigate. Yet Rey pushes on, still calling out after the thief she can no longer see, her voice swallowed instantly by the riot of sound and movement around her. The Nikto melted into the packed dance floor, somewhere in the direction of the bar. Pressing deeper into the crowd, Rey spins, searching for some sign of him. Faintly she hears an electronic voice crooning as Aurebesh numerals flash on the smoke clogging the ceiling.

 

The music crescendos with a shivering high note, the throb of it shaking the crowd as the flashing countdown scrolls **_ZERO 0 ZERO 0 ZERO_**. Bodies press in, blocking her path entirely. Any hope of finding him was shrinking fast.

 

Rey quickly weighs her options. The likelihood of a force sensitive being nearby is relatively low—the probability of one both nearby and attuned enough to detect her sweeping the room is miniscule. Breathing deeply, Rey reaches for focus and instead feels her vision skew as the lights cut out entirely with a fizzling hum.

 

All around her dancers begin to shout excitedly. Eyes rolling up as her limbs became weightless, Rey finds the source of the loud hissing. Glittering vials of some faintly glowing, gaseous mixture shimmer in the net of tubing overhead, countless valves leaking a thick haze onto the crowd.

 

The floor tilts under her feet as Rey stumbles deeper into the cantina. A new spectrum of laserlight flashes on overhead, washing the crowd into blue-black-violet that trails their dancing limbs in meteoric tails. Determined, she lurches still toward the bar at the far side of the throng, blinking and coughing.    

 

A glimpse of the thief’s spiny frill makes her pause, struggling to focus as the blue mist eddies, suspended and glittering in the dark. Her hair, hacked into uneven angles, crowds her vision further and Rey shakes her head desperately—but the room only spins faster. The low thrumming of the song twists strangely in her ears as she her body heaves the last handful of steps off of the dance floor.

 

Gasping, Rey scans the tiered booths and bartops. There is no sign of the damned Nikto’s green scales, or of her stolen braid. Defeated, dazed, and angry, Rey readies herself to turn back when she feels her gaze jolt back to a face two storeys above.

 

Ben Solo, unmistakable even in the murky light of the cantina, sits with his long legs splayed as if the booth he lounges in were a throne. The stem of a hookah pipe caught in his fingers, he bows his head low to speak with a stooped Ithorian.

 

Then his posture shifts, tenses. Rey feels a stir in the force as he stands and scans the crowd. Breath suddenly short, Rey shifts a half-step back before a brush against her mind heralds the inevitable. In the next instant, Ben’s gaze and focus slams into hers.

 

 ** _Rey?_** She can hear his surprised voice, oddly loud in her mind.

 

Eyes screwed shut against the abnormal volume of his presence, she faintly replies, _Leave me alone._

 

She can feel more than hear his reaction to that, the low sound of his frustration and disbelief grating along her nerves. A particularly colorful Coreliean oath, and then: **_Stay where you are._**

 

He might as well have dared her to turn back to the churning crowd. Rey twists in place, poised to disappear back into the fog still crawling over the dance floor when a familiar signature stirs the force around her. Her already sluggish body sways for the second it takes him to overtake her.

 

One hand clamps on her upper arm, and a voice Rey had not heard in nearly a decade growls in her ear. “What in the pit are you doing in a spice den?”

 

Jerking at his hold, Rey squints up at him. Why was he so kriffing tall? “I didn’t _mean_ to wind up in a spice den.”

 

As he crowds her toward the bar portion of the cantina, he drawls, “Of course not.”

 

Huffing, she fights the sudden vertigo she feels as his voice echoes first in her mind and then in her ears. It is like static in a commlink, or feedback on a holo. “It’s not your concern.   I’m on—“ Rey began, and had to pause to swallow at the gorge that climbs her throat.

 

Once the immediate threat of embarrassing herself any further passes, she tries again. Blowing out a harsh lungful of air, Rey meets Ben’s dark eyes and says defiantly, “M’on a mission.”

 

His expression warps into one of concern at her slurring. A thumb tugs on the ridge of her cheek as her face is tipped into what light could be found overhead. “Where were you when they sprayed that shit?”

 

**_She’s dosed. Her pupils are blown. Water. She needs water and—_ **

“I want my _hair_ back. Not water.” Scowling as deeply as she is able, Rey squirms until her chin is free and spits, “Some Nikto stole my braid. Of all the things to do.”

 

Ben seems inordinately disturbed by that. His face clouds even further, which Rey hadn’t expected was possible.

 

“You chased a thief into a Hutt cantina over your—“ His mouth becomes a bloodless line as he stops himself from whatever he was about to say.

 

Instead he hoists her into a booth and presses into her side until she curls as near to the wall as is possible.   Passing her a shallow glass, he barks, “Drink.”

 

Rey sniffs at the liquid, then sips it slowly. The cool water makes the pounding of her temples fade to something manageable. Pressing the glass into her cheek, Rey sighs in relief.

 

Ben slides onto the bench across the table, overfilling the dim corner with his broad shoulders and disapproving stare. Without preamble, he asks: “What are you doing on Smuggler’s Moon?”

 

Flippantly, Rey replies, “Being robbed and drugged, apparently.”

 

What little calm remains in Ben’s features evaporates. He bites out roughly, deliberately, “ _Where_ is your _Master_?”

 

“You’ve been gone a long time, Ben.” Rey snipes back, “Don’t feign any concern about that now.”

 

Ben works his jaw furiously and Rey nurses her revived headache in the tense silence that follows.

 

One of his long fingers stabs the tabletop as he says at last, “Even Skywalker wouldn’t send a padawan into Hutt space on a mission.”

 

Before she can do more than glower, he demands again: “What are you _really_ doing here?”

 

Dropping the now empty glass with a pointed clatter, Rey leverages herself toward the edge of the bench wordlessly.

 

The arrival of a female Twi’lek, however, stops her escape short. The tolian pours herself into the booth, sidling up to Ben’s taller frame. “Kylo,” she rasps, “Do you have anything for me?”

 

The change in his entire demeanor is staggering. A crooked smile so broad tips the corners of his eyes transforms his face—and for a second he’s the boy she once knew. Then he slides a packet of something crystalline from his jacket into the girl’s waiting hand. Rey feels her heart flip strangely in her chest at the sight.

 

“When have I ever let you down, Vol?”

 

A blissful smile lights the near-human’s face and she skims one yellow finger along Ben’s jaw before tapping his chin. “Never,” she purrs.

 

As she scoops a handful of credits out of her cleavage, the Twi’lek’s amber eyes trace over Rey. “Hello, precious.”

 

“Sweet isn’t she?” Ben mutters. “Core-worlder, fresh from the barge. Stumbled in by mistake.”

 

The way he emphasizes _Core_ makes Vol blink, the force he’s imbued there sinking reluctantly into her mind. But then she’s nodding, “What a pretty, painted face she has. Good bones. Healthy.”

 

There’s no aggression in her tone, but the way the Twi’lek stares that the glamour powder pressed into Rey’s throat and hairline and rattles plain compliments makes Rey apprehensive.

 

Flicking one of her lekku to rest over her thin shoulder, Vol cocks her head. “She’d go to the Hutt for far more than you’re making slinging spice, pretty boy. Less work for you, too.”

 

Grinning a toothy, alien smile up at Ben, she urges, “Think about it. You know where to find me.”

 

Tucking the glittering powder into her boot, Vol waves and slinks into the dancing mass below their seats before Ben—before _Kylo_ can respond.

 

For a long moment, Rey is stunned into silence. Then, angrily she hisses, “Did you just discuss _selling_ me to a _slaver_?”

 

Ben has the gall to laugh dryly, without humor. “Scandalized? You’re in the worst damn district of a _planet_ of smugglers, spice dealers, and worse.”

 

Eyes narrowed, he leans in to murmur, “Be glad they’ve no idea you’re a Jedi. That thief paid you a favor by hacking off your padawan braid. You’d be dead by now, if he hadn’t.”

 

It fills Rey with satisfaction unbecoming of her training to grin up into Ben Solo’s thunderous expression and say: “I’m a Knight. I have no _Master_ and that fool Nikto—“

 

“Got the better of you, _Knight_.” He enunciates until the word seems absurd, an insult rather than a distinction.   “Lucky that you had the sense to conceal your saber, or it would be gone as well.”

 

Shifting unconsciously, Rey reassures herself with the familiar weight of her weapon as it rolls down the small of her back. _Damned thing_ , she thinks venomously and realizes belatedly that Ben must have heard. The drug-laced mist had shredded her mental barriers. Not that they had ever repelled Ben with any real effectiveness.

 

“The saber.” He searches her face, debating delving further.

 

He would meet little resistance, she thinks bitterly. Rey can feel him turn the information over and over again at the fringe of her mind.

 

“What about it?” he mutters half to himself but does not pry into her thoughts.

 

Relieved, and begrudgingly unsurprised that Ben had left her with her secrets, Rey sags back into her seat. Surveying the crowd with a critical eye, she considers her options.

 

She could leave, try to navigate a literal _criminal world_ alone—a prospect that, initially, hadn’t seemed so daunting, but has proven to be much different than she had anticipated.  She could turn back entirely. Her commlink would make hailing a retreat possible, with pride sore but still bodily intact.

 

 _Or_ , Rey thought, she could compromise. _Adapt._

 

Pulling again at the ravaged ends of her hair, Rey ventured, “If I tell you, will you help me?”

 

Eyes still trained on her profile, Ben asks, “Will you abandon the mission, if I say no?”

 

When Rey dimples, Ben can predict what will follow her smile and sighs. “Of course you won’t.”

 

Unfolding himself to his full height, he says rather than answer, “Follow me.”


	2. Neon Night

The district that Ben leads her into is, unbelievably, even more encrusted with neon than any of the others Rey had yet seen. The adverts burn bright in the drizzle that moved in with the start of the nightcycle. Their reflections are multiplied in the pools of greasy rain until the street far below is like a gaudy starfield of flashing suns.    

 

When she finds herself struck with fascination at the sight, Rey drags in a breath through her nose. All she needs is some concentration to burn off the spice still clouding her system. But the reassuring calm of the force hovers just outside her grasp.

 

She visualizes it, swirling like a mirage in the stray light of the polluted sky. It ebbs around her, and she can nearly see a halo of frustration bloom from her temples as it shies away yet again.

 

“It’s no use.” Ben says from a few steps ahead, striding out onto a gutted sky bridge. Rey can feel the gruff familiarity of his mind as it winds around her own, probing something. It’s gone as quickly as it appeared. “Telepathic ability is a side effect of glitterstim.”

 

Rey crushes her eyes shut against the pounding in her head. “I already had that.” She rubs roughly at her hairline. “All I have now is a splitting headache.”

 

Ben hitches one wide shoulder and nods. “You’re fighting it. It’s making for a strange reaction. It should dissipate by morning.”

 

**_She was always strongest in that realm of the force. It flowed naturally in her. Now it’s amplified._ **

 

“I can hardly tell what you’re saying and which are your thoughts.”   Rey confesses, feeling queasy. The after effect of the drug is less painful than it is deeply uncomfortable. She feels jumbled; like crossed wiring, sparks jumping and coursing in all the wrong directions.  

Ben just nods again, distractedly.  Rey can see that he recalls the memory of her face— _when she was ten and freckled and enthralled by him. Her big eyes and wide smile. Affection that runs bone-deep, until it’s an ache. Until her signature in the force is familiar as his own. **She’s bright as a star.** The thoughts she chirps out into the force around them, innocently, are just an extension of all that he knows as little Rey. Suddenly, she’s sixteen. A stranger. Face familiar but mind locked away behind an elegant defense. Guileless still, but poised. Collected. **Not a single star but a little cosmos**_ —

 

The thread of recollection snaps, and Rey can feel him tense. His eyes are impossible to decipher when he flashes a look back over his shoulder. Rey considers an apology, even if she hadn’t intended to intrude. Instead she nudges the half-formed thought toward him. Something recedes in Ben’s gaze, flicks to something over her shoulder, and then he turns away again.

 

A sharp turn later he stops short and loops an arm behind her so that her smaller frame is eclipsed by his. He taps out a series of commands on a wall-mounted panel, eyeing a nearby Ishi Tib. Leaning down he thinks to her—she’s sure this time, because she can feel him there in her thoughts, closer even than the sensation of his breath on her neck— ** _Play along_. **

Then his hands slide into her hair and she doesn’t have to feign the sound that spills out of her. The twinned sensations of his touch and the echo of it in their shared thoughts are intense. A feedback loop of pleasure. She scarcely notices when Ben walks her backward, face pressed into the column of her throat.

 

Instead she feels the fan of his breath against her ear, the hands that move to fist into the material at her waist. The fabric strains and her hypersensitive skin magnifies the thrill of it. Rey feels herself shiver, chokes on a gasp when his lips brush a faint kiss against her collarbone, murmuring something as the door slides shut in their wake.

 

Behind her eyelids she remembers— _Ben Solo, always a span taller and a parsec ahead. The shape of his broad back and the curve of his smirk. His hair, shorter and curling on his brow as he bends to tease her. Devotion floods her childish heart, overfills it. **He’s so perfect.** The other padawans trailing in his wake as he moves smoothly through the forms. Eyes trained on him, always **always** always, she works and waits and hopes. He’s everything she is not and all she **wants** —_

“Rey.” He groans, forehead pressed against hers. His voice is raw but his eyes are open and searching hers. Clearing his throat, he draws back and explains, “The Hutt has eyes everywhere.”

 

An image of the Ishi Tib flashes between them. **_They can’t know what you are._**

 

 _What **I** am? _ she wonders with a tinge of bitterness.

 

Hands braced on the wall at her back, Rey surveys the room rather than reply aloud. It’s not tidy. Bits of machinery clutter every surface with discarded cartons of food and balled-up clothing filling what space is left. The contrast of it with what she remembers of his quarters in the praxeum is jarring.

 

The faint scent of hookah smoke clings to her hair, its unfamiliar tang drawing her thoughts back to the man. He’s standing rigidly, leather jacket discarded, far as he can retreat from her in the small space. In the even lighting of his apartment, she can see that he’s someone else entirely.

 

He’s taller than she remembered, towering even with his shoulders curved in as they are. More muscular, and thinner too—somehow at once. A new scar divides his face, cheek to opposite brow. Frown lines bracket his mouth. Paired blasters hang from his hip in place of his distinctive saber. No sign is left of his time in the Order, now.

 

_He’s nothing like the boy I knew._

 

She hears him take her in as well. The glitterstim makes it easy as breathing, skimming the thoughts from his head. He’s surprised by the sight of her without her robes and braid. She seems older and the realization sits uneasily with him. The asymmetry of her hair, shorn above the shoulder, adds to the effect. It flies from her temples but sharpens her cheekbones with its shadows—she’s fair-faced and fine-boned.   _And painted_ , he thinks, _like a queen of Naboo_.  The glamour powder she’d bought on a whim, for a disguise she’d reasoned, makes her skin glow gold. Thick pigment is streaked beneath her eyes, and with it they shine starkly green in a way he had forgotten they could.

 

He thinks she looks like she’s pretending.

 

Whether he means that she is pretending to be a Core worlder—or at being a Jedi Knight—is unclear. Either is enough to sour the moment.

 

The urge to rub the cosmetics away, which had risen steadily as he studied them, drains away as her temper flares. Beneath her borrowed tunic, holstered in the belt she had made for herself is _proof_ she isn’t pretending at Knighthood.

 

Drawing her saber and leveling it with the floor in a loose grip, Rey flicks it to life. It screeches, stretches at either end until an uneven staff is flickering in her fist. Its green glow fills the small apartment with light brighter than the neon outside.

 

Ben tilts his head, studying the sight of it. “It’s unstable.”

 

Rey grudgingly explains, “I can’t divide the crystal’s beam evenly.”

 

Arms crossed, he watches the blades sputter and surge. “Where is the cyan?”

 

She knows he means the heirloom saber she had been trained with, at the praxeum.

 

His thoughts turn and she sees _herself flying through an acrobatic exercise, a smudge of blue and dun in her padawan robes. She’s watching herself from the observation deck above the training grounds. Luke is standing beside her—no, beside Ben—speaking lowly, in that earnest way of his. **It’s**_ **unnatural** _.  Anger wells up in their chest at Master’s words. The disapproval in his tone reverberates through the memory._

 

A deep frown overtakes Rey’s face. “That saber wasn’t mine. _This_ crystal that called to me.”

 

He turns away, expression shuttered even before she can ask, “Unnatural?”

 

“Leave it.”

 

“If it was about me—“

 

“It wasn’t.” Shaking his head and scrolling through the holoscreen, he mutters, “It hardly matters now.”

 

The screen flashes on, schematics spinning in a slow circle over the projector. It’s an ancient reference holo. The writing that denotes the various portions of the deconstructed saber are logged in a dialect so old it’s nearly unrecognizable as Basic.

 

When she draws nearer, Rey verifies what she had already suspected. _Quillions._ It’s the contents of the holocron Ben had discovered during his trials. She remembers _the sight of his distinctive ship dropping into low atmo. Charging from the training fields to the hangar, already certain. Ben, ragged and dirty but grinning. The irregular shape of the stone-and-metal thing he’d clutched in one hand. And in the other—amber fire split into three blades._

 

One of them, it’s impossible to even tell which, now, severs the shared memory. Rather than address it, Rey draws up beside him for a closer look. Even as she stares at the intricacy of this method, she knows it will not teach her what she needs.

 

“This won’t work.” Worrying the corner of one lip, Rey looks up to Ben. “I need the holocron of staves.”

 

It takes him a moment to extrapolate from the plain statement what she means to do. She can see the instant it dawns.

 

“No.”

 

“It _belongs_ to the Temple.” Pressing her hands into fists, Rey adds, “They all do. It’s Jedi knowledge, heritage—not decoration for some sleemo collector!”

 

Ben rubs a hand roughly through his long hair. **_I can’t believe I have to tell her twice._** “No.”

 

“You’ve done it before, how hard could—? “

 

“ _That_ was buried in a fallen Temple,” he jabs a finger at the still spinning holo image. “I beat the Hutt to it.”

****

**_No theft, no attempt at sneaking into his palace on his planet._** He projects pointedly, to clarify, as if she’s dim.

 

The silence stretches between them again, her resolve matched to his exasperation. She isn’t sure how long they stand there, his arms crossed forebodingly as he stares down his long nose at her. She knows she not quite herself, the glitterstim zinging through her veins and hazing her thoughts. Still, she refuses to feel small.

 

“I am going to get what I’ve come for,” Rey says, with finality. As if a heist of the magnitude she’s discussing will be easy—as if sheer determination will carry her through.

 

Twisting the blade in her fist, she powers it down. Sparks shed from it hover between them for a moment, like glow flies, until they slowly wink out of existence.

 

“You don’t—“ She feels herself stutter into the void between them. She swallows and stops herself short of making an excuse for him. An ugly emotion twists in her chest as she admits, stiltedly, “I understand that the affairs of the Order, and of a Jedi, are no longer yours—“

 

“I know.“ Grimly, he grits his teeth and bows his head. The force around him shudders as he presses some dark thought down, away. His eyes flick back up to hers, face still tipped down. He shifts like he would like to pace, then thinks better of it; like he is caged in by the small apartment, or by the situation.  

 

“It won’t be simple.” He knots his fingers together and grinds out the words. His stare locks onto hers and he says slowly, “But I’ll do what I can.”

 

Rey releases a breath, nods. The familiar hush of the force flits around her, closer now than before as the drug in her system begins to fade. Relief surges in, soothing the muffled panic rising with each experience on the Smuggler’s Moon.

 

“You’ll sleep here.” He gestures vaguely at the bunk recessed into the wall. When Rey moves to protest, Ben scowls. “You’re spice dosed and alone on _Nar Shaddaa_. You can sleep it off here.”

 

He tugs a pile of crumpled linen and a battered datapad off the narrow bed, pointing at the cleared space with his elbow and offering no further discussion.    

 

Instead, he huddles all the laundry together into a rough pile and taps out a hail for a service droid. Almost immediately, a small fleet of rented mouse droids emerge from the service chute with a chime, teeming over the floor. Next Ben shoves the trash into a second, teetering pile and mutters about an incinerator somewhere in the building block as he disappears into a side room.

 

Weighing the incomplete saberstaff in her palm for a moment longer, Rey reluctantly sets it onto the spot he has cleared on the workbench. The silver shape of it among his things makes her wonder fleetingly what he has done with his own.

 

The quillion instructions were still stored in his files, she reasons as she tugs off her belt and shoes. But she sees nothing else to indicate he is anything more now than what he claims to be. A smuggler. A former Jedi and exile, he may be, but there is no visible sign.

 

Thoughts still spinning, Rey crawls up the rungs mounted on the wall until she’s perched in the unit’s only bunk. Once she’s maneuvered so that her flushed cheek is pressed close to the cooler metal of the viewport that lines the space, she studies the city beyond instead. Soon, the still-bustling skyways beyond blur as she fades into sleep.


	3. Cosmos

Rey wakes late the next cycle. The soft hum of circuitry is all that fills the space. As she climbs from the recessed bunk, Rey scans the room. It is still as small and half-cluttered as it was before she slept.

 

Ben is nowhere to be seen. She’s not sure where he slept, she realizes.

 

Her saber is where she left it at his workbench and its familiar shape and dull finish comforting in this strange place. She tucks it securely into its place on her back as she heads for the door.

 

She has reconnaissance work to do, with or without him.

 

The panel slides open, wafting the sour smell of the city in with it, before she can touch the control panel. Ben stands bracketed in the doorway, bags of takeout dangling from his hands and vague surprise etched into his features.

 

“Awake already?” He asks as he presses her back into the narrow apartment. “Imagined you’d sleep at least another couple of hours.”

 

Rey crosses her arms, watching as he searches for somewhere to place the bags of food in the cramped space. “I’m used to morning meditations.” Glancing out at the skyline, she adds, “I’ve already slept longer than I would have liked.”

 

“Right,” he says, tone brisk. Ben decides at last to spread the food across the floor, folding down bags and boxes into makeshift plates. When he drops into an easy, cross-legged position, Rey reluctantly does the same. Backs against opposite walls, there is still hardly enough space for the meal between them.

 

Uncomfortable silence blooms between them as Rey grasps for something to say. Ben, for his part, seems unperturbed. He tears into a box of milky noodles with a hooked utensil. The spicy, nutty scent of the dish makes her stomach growl.

 

“You have no furniture.” Rey ventures at last, reaching for one of the crumbling pastries piled between them. Gesturing at the sparse apartment, she adds, “It’s almost like our cells at the praxium.”

 

It seems oddly austere, given his otherwise relaxed manner of living.

He had otherwise discarded the Jedi way.

 

Ben shrugs dismissively, eating steadily as he answers. “I sleep here.”

 

Her eyes trail to the bare shelf where she had spent the night. Last night he hadn’t. She wonders where he’d gone instead, but she nods rather than press further.

 

The bright flavor of fruit distracts her anyway. Blinking, she takes another, larger taste of the flaking thing. She’d grabbed it at random and had been eating mechanically. She finishes it in two more bites and grabs another, tearing it in half to inspect the delicious filling.   A soft laugh startles her.

 

Ben is staring at her and his expression is odd.

 

“This is amazing.” Rey explains, squeezing a piece just to see the golden colored syrup ooze from in between the layers of dough. “What is it?”

 

“Shuura.” Staring resolutely at his own plate, he adds stiltedly, “It’s a fruit.”

 

Rey rolls her eyes. “I know that. I’ve had fruit before. Never made this way, though.”   Plucking up a third little pastry, she brakes it into tiny bites and eats it slowly. She hums happily to herself as she savors its sweetness.

 

Ben’s shoulders are curved high as he haunches around his own breakfast, tense with something that he won’t say. Instead he moves on to a pile of steamed greens topped with an enormous egg.   Prodding it until all three yolks are running, he takes a deep breath through his nose and picks a new topic of conversation.

 

They settle into something more peaceable, working their way through the dozens of bags and containers scattered between them. Ben piles a thick, ruddy paste onto half of everything he eats. When Rey imitates him, stirring a glob of the sauce into her next mouthful, she’s struck by heat so intense that she feels winded.

 

Eyes streaming, she coughs and sputters, “Why would you want to _eat_ that?”

 

Ben barks a laugh that reminds her of his father. “It’s not that hot.”

 

“Hotter than lava.”   Rey grumbles, passing Ben the carton she’d seasoned with the offending stuff, spooning thick porridge onto her still-burning tongue instead.

 

Ben shakes his head but takes her offering, finishing the spiced vegetables with a flourish that makes Rey laugh. Although he fights a smile, the humor lights his features and he’s more familiar than he’d seemed the night before.

 

He takes pity and passes her a tall jug of something clear and frothy. “Drink that, it’ll dull the burn.”

 

Rey eyes him and the liquid skeptically. He’s still got the suggestion of a smile on his face, but she’s reasonably sure he’s not teasing her or goading her into trying something worse than the aftertaste of that awful seasoning of his.   Bravely, she takes a sip. The flavor of the stuff is mostly unremarkable but the texture it leaves on her tongue makes her frown. A slight bitter bite is the only thing she can register for a moment after she swallows, but the burn disappears as promised.

 

“Another acquired taste.” Ben mutters, still looking pleased with himself.

 

“Clearly.” Rey sighs, plugging the drink with its stopper and shoving it back toward his side of their little feast.

 

Mouth crooked, he’s about to reply when a chime interrupts him. The panel beside the door blinks and for a moment they both freeze. The sound comes again quickly, echoing loudly in the small space. Ben shoots upright in surprise.

 

Surging to his feet, he waves at her to duck out of sight as he inspects the door’s tiny viewport. Her options, she realizes, are the cramped fresher or an even shallower closet.

 

The decision is made for her when the prickling pressure of a force shove sends her stumbling into the dark closet. Impulsively, Rey flicks a gesture of her own as his will presses the closet shut.   The thin breeze she created brushes past him and she watches him shiver as it stirs his hair. His mind presses near hers, leaving her with the impression of his irritation and a peek at the Ithorian in the doorway.

 

She can no longer see him, but she can hear the bravado in his tone as he greets the visitor in Huttese. The conversation is brief but difficult to follow. They slur the sounds of their words until she struggles to follow any of what is being said. All she _can_ make out is nonsense. Local dialect or a string of codewords, she thinks, as they exchange a rapid-fire series of back-and-forth half-shouts that sounds a bit like haggling.

 

Footsteps draw up to her hiding place, and for a breathless second, Rey freezes. _Is he going to open the door?_ But instead he stops and rustles through something near enough to it that his shadow flits past the loose seal where the closet’s panel meets the floor.  

 

“You can come out.” He calls a moment later, still distracted by something piled on the workbench when she steps out.

 

As quickly as he had appeared, the Ithorian is gone. They weren’t going to discuss it. She knows that, but resents it all the same.

 

Dismissing the thought, she squares her shoulders. “I need to find a vantage point.”

 

Ben pulls himself away from whatever he’s sorting at last. His tone is flat, but he moves to sprawl where he’d sat before, taking up the food he’d abandoned. “You don’t know what you’re looking for—“

 

“Which is why I need to find a vantage point for meditation.” She presses, moving toward the door. He’s still not stopping her, really, but his long legs are blocking the doorway. She’ll have to climb over him to leave. Gritting her teeth at his childishness, she stares him down and goads him despite herself. “You don’t approve?”

 

He sifts through the bags rather than respond. Rey watches, temper rising as he digs into yet another carton. Finally settling on a new dish, he stirs the chunks of glazed fruit jerkily.

 

Sarcastically, he replies at last: “You might say that.”

 

Rey bristles. “It’s a reasonable plan.”

 

“ _Find some high ground and look around_ is hardly a plan.” He spears a slice of something lividly green and points it at her. “You don’t _have_ a plan, do you?”

 

Rey narrows her eyes, watching as he chomps with more force than seems necessary. Drawing a calming breath, she explains, “I am prepared. I gathered intel and located the holocron. Now I need to find out precisely _where_ —“

 

He cuts in with a dismissive gesture. “Narrowed it down to a planet, did you? Good. Now what? Locate the Hutt’s palace? The _heavily guarded_ palace that takes up most of a district?” Slouching so that his elbows are braced on his knees, Ben tilts forward. “Then what?”

 

“Infiltration.”

 

He scoffs and Rey can feel her entire body begin to hum with the anger that crashes over her at the sound.

 

“Skywalker didn’t send you.” He reasons. With great difficulty, he manages to keep his voice level as he asks, “So where did you get the information? Who knows you’re here?”

 

Rey keeps her jaw locked firmly. Ben simply waits, watching her as her thoughts swirl. He doesn’t have to wait long until he sees a face flash through her uppermost thoughts. _Han._

 

“That old—“

 

_Bastard_ , he thinks but Rey hears it none-the-less. His mind is all around hers, not pressing into her private thoughts, really. But the lingering effects of the drug are making them drift like a weak-minded fool.

 

_He thinks I’m capable_. She thinks, or says. She isn’t sure in the madness of the moment that follows as old wounds tear open. _He knows I earned my place in the Order. He was only **helping** me. _    

 

Ben finally abandons his food, dropping the box and utensil with a clatter. “ _Rey_ ,” he says, and she just knows what’s coming. _Be reasonable, Rey._ She can hear Luke’s voice coming from his mouth already and suddenly feels twelve again, scolded for some impulsive thing she’d done. “This has gone far enough—”

 

“No.” Rey whispers back, too furious to shout. But she’s speaking this time, she’s sure of it. “I’m going. This has _nothing_ to do with you, Ben Solo. You are no master of mine.”

 

Before Ben can say whatever is darkening his expression like a storm, another soft chime brakes the tension. He stands. Without taking his eyes from Rey, he mashes the audio button on the door’s panel and growls, “Not now.”

 

An answering stream of angry cursing and threats is cut off when he slams another button.

 

“This suits you.” Rey hears herself say, as if she’s watching the moment play out from somewhere else entirely. “Spice slinging,” she drawls, just to see the reaction flicker across his face.

 

She isn’t disappointed.

 

“This isn’t about what I’m doing.” He thunders, pointing at her.

 

Rey nearly steps back at the volume of his voice. She’s not sure he’s ever shouted at her before—

 

_A younger Han appears in her mind’s eye, toe-to-toe with a tiny woman in an elaborate dress. They’re both shouting, but it’s Han—father’s—voice that rings out in Ben’s memory._

**_Kriff, I sound just like him._** Ben recoils and Rey thinks maybe he’s never been as angry as he is with himself at that thought.

 

The anger evaporates from his face, and she thinks maybe his eyes are wet as she shoves past him and onto the street.

 

Rey’s mind spins with the undirected emotion as she stalks into the crowds. They teem around her, swallowing her whole before Ben can stop her. But then, she’s not certain he tries.

 

Minutes or hours pass, leaving her just with the impression of the filthy city as it streaks past her. Her eyes are locked on the tallest point of the skyline. It draws her like a beacon, her exhausted mind is soothed by the comfort of a task. An achievable goal. Those always seem so few and far between when _Solo_ is nearby.

 

It’s easy to slip past the building’s sparse security. She hardly remembers doing it, truthfully. Instead she hears his voice and their intermingled thoughts looping in her mind as she climbs. Hand over hand. She lets it numb her into a calm that makes meditation easier once she reaches the roof.

 

Peace settles over her like a physical touch, relaxing the knotted muscles of her shoulders and dragging out her breath in a ragged sigh.

 

When she returns to herself, her cheeks are cold even though the air is muggy. _He’s close_ , she realizes and her knees click as she stands. Shoulder braced against the sooty cupola, she scrubs her face and stares blindly down into the throngs below her perch.

 

A faint echo of his will washes over Rey. He’s hailing her in the force, reaching for her, she knows. It would only take a thought, the tiniest piece of her will, to ping a return to him. Faster than light, he’d simply _know_ precisely where she was. That thought used to give her comfort. Now she just thinks of how easy it was to evade him. Tipping her face up to consider the few, faint stars that manage to shine through the pollution, Rey wonders if she’s gotten better or if he’s just fallen out of practice.

 

Then a thrum of something inexplicably _deeper_ races over her skin and Rey can feel it resonate behind her breastbone.

 

She doesn’t have to look. She knows the moment he arrives. She can feel him pluck at the edges of her thoughts, feels it and knows he’s standing down there on the street. She looks anyway.

 

He’s stopped on the busy walkway that stretches past her perch. The crowd pours around him, wreathing him as he stares up at her. She’s just a smudge from this distance, she reasons. But the strange resonance comes again, and his face is in sharp focus, close as one of his thoughts when their minds are alongside each other.

 

_There you are_ , he thinks to her, and for a moment she sees a spray of stars. Not a memory, she thinks with a frown. It’s abstract. _Cosmos_ , she realizes and suddenly her heart is in her throat. That’s what he calls her in his thoughts. _Little cosmos._

 

A shudder rolls through Rey and she pushes a silvery _ping_ back to him, even though he’s already found her. Just like they’d practiced a lifetime ago. Alongside it this time is a thought: _I’m here._  


End file.
